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      The Yates Report Isn’t the End. It’s Just the Start.

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      Women’s soccer players tried to raise the alarm about abuse for years. When they say there’s more, people should listen.Somehow, at the end, Megan Rapinoe could still sound enthusiastic. She had spent the previous 20 minutes answering question after question about the “devastating” findings of the Yates Report, trying to explain how it feels to know that the sport to which you have devoted your life has permitted a culture of “systemic abuse” to fester, finding a way to put into words how painful it can be to read, in stark black and white, that which you have always known.Rapinoe had met each and every one of the questions, as she always does, with the habitual, measured candor that has become her hallmark. Not once did she intimate that she had said all she had to say. Not once did she try to change the subject, to guide the conversation onto ground less harrowing, less bleak. She was asked, again and again, to describe and to parse and to relive her trauma, and the trauma of so many of her colleagues and friends, and she did so, until there were no more questions left.Her anger — her tone pitched both to convey and control it — was clear, but so too was her fatigue. Rapinoe and her teammates have had to “shoulder a lot” over the years, as she put it. The struggle to free the sport, their sport, of both abusers and the individuals and the structures that have both harbored and nourished them is not their first battle. This team has fought for equal pay and for social justice, too. “We have a lot of experience,” Rapinoe said.At that point, for just a moment, she sounded tired. But then, almost as an afterthought, someone pointed out where she was, what was about to happen: Rapinoe was sitting inside London’s Wembley Stadium, preparing for a game on Friday night that will match the United States, the reigning world champion, against England, now officially ensconced as Europe’s premier team.Every single seat at the stadium was sold, snapped up almost as soon as they went on sale: 90,000 or so fans would be coming to watch a game that, to many, has the air of a sneak preview of next year’s World Cup final. And, in an instant, Rapinoe’s enthusiasm was clear. “I am so excited for this game,” she said. “This is a really special moment for our sport.”The U.S. captain, Becky Sauerbrunn, and several of her teammates spoke this week of the need to find joy in their sport anywhere they could. Friday’s game against England at Wembley is a start.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersThe Yates Report is, in effect, more than 300 pages of tragedy: personal tragedies compounded by the tragedy of chronic institutional failure, each one of them part of a mosaic that has left an open wound, an aching scar in the heart of women’s soccer. Given some of the revelations, it would be glib in the extreme to highlight one aspect that is more upsetting, more harrowing than any other. Much of it, as Rapinoe said, is “hard to read.”But there is a particular, keening sorrow in knowing that, so often, it was the same enthusiasm that so animated Rapinoe — even as a veteran, even after all she has achieved and, most significantly, all that she has endured — that was so often weaponized by those in power to silence those trying to safeguard the game and to protect those damaging it.The teams of the N.W.S.L., the league itself and even U.S. Soccer, the Yates report found, “gave little thought or attention to basic player protections.” Instead, investigators concluded, “the focus was on keeping eight teams on the field to ensure the league’s survival.”Those reporting abuse, in other words, were either ignored or discouraged by leveraging their passion for soccer against them, while those committing it were indulged — ushered into new jobs with hearty farewells — because, it seems, of an unwillingness to rock the boat in case everyone ended up submerged. The players believed in their mission to grow women’s soccer as a sport; they had a responsibility not just to themselves, but to the sport, too. And that, too often, was used against them.The Yates Report, it is to be hoped, will explode that enforced omertà. “I think this was kind of the nail in the coffin,” as Rapinoe’s United States teammate, Crystal Dunn, put it this week.What she referred to as “accountability,” but might better be described as “overdue bloodletting,” has already begun: Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Portland Thorns, has stepped away from the team’s decision-making process. Arnim Whisler, the owner of the Chicago Red Stars, has been removed from that club’s board. Neither has, as yet, been forced to sell his team, but the writing is on the wall.“Every owner and executive and U.S. Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players and failed to protect the players, who have hidden behind legalities and have not participated in these investigations, should be gone,” said Becky Sauerbrunn, the U.S. captain, earlier this week. Rapinoe went a little further. She did not bother with euphemism when she declared that, from this point on, neither Paulson nor Whisler fit to be involved in women’s soccer at all. She has reached the stage where she is prepared to name names.N.W.S.L. players and fans are demanding accountability, even from their own teams.via ReutersBut that does not mean either the report itself, or the handful of senior figures scorched by their sudden exposure to sunlight, represents a conclusion. Publication is not enough. The fall of Paulson and Whisler, if and when it comes, is not enough.Here, too, there is a tragedy: The “horrific” details of the Yates report are not, and should not be mistaken for, the sum total of the problem. The investigators themselves note that they received several credible accusations of sexual harassment that they could not corroborate sufficiently for inclusion. And the players themselves know there is more to find.“This is not just in the N.W.S.L,” said Lindsey Horan, the United States midfielder, now playing for the French team Lyon. “This is women’s soccer, this is women in general. We have these problems all over the world. I sit here and I’m like: It’s not done. This is all over the world. Being a player in Europe right now, I know that.”Rapinoe has the same sense. “This report has come out in our country,” she said. “But the reality is it could be any country in the world.”There is more to be done, they know. They are angry and they are disappointed and they are tired, too. “Emotionally exhausted,” Rapinoe said. But — in a sport full of athletes finding their voices — that is the thing about this team, in particular. No matter how tired they are, no matter how bleak it is, they have never lost their enthusiasm for the fight.Let’s Blue Sky ThisTodd Boehly has, it seems, started something. It is little more than a month since the Chelsea owner — unprompted and ill-advisedly — suggested that the Premier League might like to consider staging its own version of an all-star game, and the idea has already mutated into something even bigger, even more unwieldy, and even more likely to be derided on talk radio.Various unnamed Premier League executives have, according to The Times of London, floated the possibility of staging a series of showpiece games across the world between teams comprising the best players from the top flights of England, Italy, Spain and Germany — sorry, France, you don’t make the cut, apparently — in order to expand soccer’s appeal to “emerging markets.”There are several red flags here. The fact the executives are unnamed, for example. As a rule, if someone thinks they have a good idea, a real winner, they cannot wait to put their name to it. If, on the other hand, they are engaged in what might be described as a craven money grab, they tend to decide that they are “not authorized to speak on the matter.”So, too, the justification for the project. Does soccer really need to expand into emerging markets? What possible territory remains virgin to the great sports industrial complex? There are farmers in wild corners of Mongolia who will spend hours online screaming that Cristiano Ronaldo only scores penalties; seeing Sandro Tonali and Declan Rice in Shanghai will not add to their ardor for the sport.But putting that entirely understandable queasiness aside — and parking, just for a moment, the valid complaint that elite players do too much soccer-playing as it is — we must consider the unlikely possibility that this is, in fact, quite a good idea. Particularly, say, if these fixtures replaced preseason tours, and if the money they generated was weighted so that the smaller teams in each league got rather more of it.That does not mean it is not a craven money grab, of course. It is very obviously a craven money grab. If something is being suggested by a major soccer team, it goes without saying that it is because they think they have spotted an untapped revenue stream. But that does not mean it is necessarily devoid of merit.The Context of RecordsErling Haaland makes scoring look easy. It’s not.Lindsey Parnaby/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesErling Haaland’s first goal on Tuesday night took him past Edin Dzeko and Mario Gomez. His second, not quite half an hour later, lifted him above Rivaldo and Luis Suárez. The Manchester City striker has now scored as many times in the Champions League as Ryan Giggs did. In 15.17 percent of the time.The speed with which Haaland — at age 22 — is rising up the list of the competition’s all-time goal scorers is blistering. He needs six more to overtake not just Wayne Rooney and Kaka and Samuel Eto’o, but Gerd Müller. There is no reason to believe, at his current rate of progress, that he will not have done that by the end of this season’s group phase.A decent run in the knockout stage should see him break into the top 20. Given that he has now scored 19 goals in only 12 games since joining City, that may not be the limit of his ambitions. He is a young man going places extremely fast.As breathtaking and as stirring as his achievements are, it is necessary to place them within just a small piece of context. Over the last decade or so, as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have broken almost every record available to them, each landmark has been greeted as proof of their wondrous talent. That, of course, is only right. The same applies to Haaland.But it is also the case that all of them are products, to some extent, of their eras. Messi and Ronaldo were playing, at the peak of their careers, for teams that had far greater financial resources than the vast majority of teams they faced until the latter stages of the Champions League. The competition was far more unbalanced, far less equal, than it had been even 10 or 15 years earlier.The same, once again, applies to Haaland, both at Manchester City and — to some extent — in his last stop at Borussia Dortmund. He is playing, for the most part, against teams that are hopelessly overmatched, in a way that the likes of Filippo Inzaghi, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Raúl Gonzalez, all above him in the list, were not.That does not diminish Haaland’s talent. Nor does it devalue his goals, or discredit his achievements. But it is important to remember, in an era in which records seem to fall with dread frequency, that they do so because the game is set up now to make them more attainable than ever for the precious few to have them in their grasp.CorrespondenceA curious question to open this week, from Lloyd Mallison. Curious not because it is bad — it is not; it’s a good question — but curious because it’s strange what catches each of our eyes. “Do you have any insight into the rehabilitation of Saúl at Atlético Madrid?” Lloyd asked. “After his pretty limp time at Chelsea, I didn’t expect to see him back starting again so soon.”I have no particular insight, sadly, other than to suggest that it is a welcome reminder of this column’s motto: There is no such thing as a bad (professional) soccer player. There are only players in the wrong systems, or working with the wrong coaches, or in the wrong context. Chelsea was not right for Saúl. That doesn’t mean Saúl cannot be right somewhere else.We had a couple of emails on the travails of Juventus, too, which act as a neat couplet. Joseph Blanco sent in some perceptive thoughts on the dangers of what we have come to call “philosophy,” pointing out that the game is “turning a generation of players into robots.” He is, in that sense, what we might call an Allegrista.Massimiliano Allegri, calmly pondering the merits of philosophy vs. culture.Massimo Pinca/ReutersHe disagrees, though, that Massimiliano Allegri’s anti-philosophy approach can be equated to Juventus’s scatter-gun approach to team-building. “I don’t think it’s fair to say the struggles of the team are the same as the organization’s shortcomings,” he wrote.That dovetails neatly with this observation from Tory Amorello: “I couldn’t help but think about how it would feel if you exchanged the word philosophy for culture. I think the way that managers talk about philosophy is somewhat limited to announcing a defined style of play. Take that concept away from the field, and it’s called culture.”That, perhaps, sums up the bind Juventus finds itself in far more succinctly than I managed: It is not a failing of philosophy, but of broader culture. I shall take that, repeat it on various broadcast media and do my level best, Tory, not to present it as entirely my own work. More

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      Portland Thorns Owner Steps Aside as U.S. Soccer Stars Call for Change

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      Becky Sauerbrunn said any official found to have failed to protect players “should be gone.” As she spoke, the owner of her club, the Portland Thorns, said he would leave the team temporarily.LONDON — The captain of the world champion United States women’s national soccer team said Tuesday that any owner or executive implicated in a damning report on abuse in women’s soccer “should be gone” from the sport. That group of people, the captain, Becky Sauerbrunn, made clear, includes the owner and several top executives of her own club team, the Portland Thorns.“You have failed in your stewardship,” Sauerbrunn said of soccer leaders and executives whose behavior was detailed in a scathing report, released Monday, that revealed years of abuse in American women’s soccer. “And it’s my opinion that every owner and executive and U.S. Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players, and failed to protect the players, who have hidden behind legalities, and who have not participated fully in these investigations, should be gone.”As she was speaking, the Thorns’ owner, Merritt Paulson, released a statement in which he said he was “removing myself effective today” from the team’s decision-making. But Paulson gave no indication that he planned to sell the team in Portland, Ore., a stance that, for the moment, put him directly at odds with Sauerbrunn, one of his club’s most decorated and popular players.Asked to clarify if her remarks included Paulson, Sauerbrunn, citing specific accusations against the owner and the Thorns but not speaking his name, left little doubt that Paulson was among the targets of her comments.“It includes everyone that has continued to fail the players time and time again,” she said of those who should be ostracized from soccer.Paulson and at least two team executives were accused in a report compiled by the former Justice Department official Sally Q. Yates of hiding their knowledge of abuse by a former Thorns coach; of dismissing the claims of a player who raised such concerns; and of staying silent while the coach moved from team to team in the National Women’s Soccer League.Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Portland Thorns, said he would step aside from his duties while the National Women’s Soccer League and its players’ union investigate widespread claims of abuse.Troy Wayrynen/USA TODAY Sports via ReutersSauerbrunn and her teammate Alana Cook, who spoke on the same call on Tuesday evening, were unsparing in their view that strong action, including the forced sale of teams and the firing of officials known to have hidden or abetted the abuse of women, was overdue.“I think it’s time,” Sauerbrunn said, “for those that are in authority and leadership positions to start holding each other accountable, and asking for the change that needs to happen.”Cook, like Sauerbrunn, said that with players having come forward to reveal and document years of abuse, the responsibility to remove problematic coaches, executives and owners lay with the sport’s leadership.“For so long it’s been on the players to speak out,” Cook said. “It shouldn’t be on us anymore.”Sauerbrunn and Cook spoke in London, where the United States will play the European champion England in an exhibition game Friday night. Both players, and their coach, Vlatko Andonovski, said the team was reeling from the revelations in the Yates report, and struggling to focus on Friday’s game.“The players are not doing well,” Sauerbrunn said. “We are horrified and heartbroken and frustrated and exhausted and really, really angry.”Andonovski said that he and his staff were respecting that each player was processing the report differently, and that all have been given room to do that. Allowances have been made, he said, for players to skip meetings, training sessions and even Friday’s game.Paulson’s statement was his first public comment since the release of the report. He said in the statement that two other top Thorns executives whose personal and professional behavior was criticized in the report, the president of soccer Gavin Wilkinson and the team’s president of business Mike Golub, would also step aside while a separate investigation is conducted by the N.W.S.L. and its players’ union.But Paulson gave no indication that he planned to sell the team, and Sauerbrunn and Cook along with other players quickly signaled that stopping short of a complete exit would be inadequate.“I think that a lot of trust has been broken,” Sauerbrunn said. She added, “At the end of the day, if people continue to fail the players, and they don’t comply with anything that gets asked of them in these reports and gets implemented in these reports, they need to be gone gone.” More

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      Report Details ‘Systemic’ Abuse of Players in Women’s Soccer

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      A yearlong investigation found U.S. Soccer executives, N.W.S.L. owners and coaches at all levels of American soccer had turned a blind eye toward years of reports of abuse from players.One coach called in a player to review game film and showed her pornography instead. Another was notorious at the highest levels of women’s soccer for alternately berating his players and then quizzing them about their sex lives.A third coach coerced multiple players into sexual relationships, behavior that one top team found so disturbing that it fired him. But when he was hired by a rival team only a few months later, the original club, which had documented his behavior in an internal investigation, said nothing. Instead, it publicly wished him well in his new post.Those details and others fill a highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer that found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.The report was published Monday, a year after players outraged by what they saw as a culture of abuse in their sport demanded changes by refusing to take the field. It found that leaders of the N.W.S.L. and the United States Soccer Federation — the governing body of the sport in America — as well as owners, executives and coaches at all levels failed to act on years of voluminous and persistent reports of abuse by coaches.All were more concerned about being sued by coaches or about the teetering finances of women’s professional soccer than player welfare, according to the report, creating a system in which abusive and predatory coaches were able to move freely from team to team at the top levels of women’s soccer.“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims,” Sally Q. Yates, the lead investigator, wrote in the report’s executive summary. “Abuse in the N.W.S.L. is rooted in a deeper culture in women’s soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players.”Read the Report on Abuse in Women’s SoccerAn investigative report commissioned by the United States Soccer Federation found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the National Women’s Soccer League. It also issued warning signs that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.Read Document 319 pagesLast year, U.S. Soccer commissioned Yates, a former deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to look into the sport after reports in The Athletic and The Washington Post detailed accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. After the news media reports, and after games were postponed as furious players protested publicly, league executives resigned and were fired. Within weeks, half of the 10-team league’s coaches had been linked to allegations of abuse, and some of the world’s top players had recounted their own stories of mistreatment.Cindy Parlow Cone, the U.S. Soccer president and a former member of the national team, called the findings “devastating and infuriating.” Cone said there are “systemic failures within soccer that must be corrected,” and that the federation would immediately implement a number of the report’s recommendations.A National Women’s Soccer League game between Gotham F.C. and the Washington Spirit last October.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesThe report made a lengthy list of recommendations that it said should be adopted by U.S. Soccer, and in some cases the women’s league, including making a public list of individuals suspended or barred by U.S. Soccer, meaningfully vetting coaches when licensing them, requiring investigations into accusations of abuse, making clear policies and rules around acceptable behavior and conduct, and hiring player safety officers, among other requirements.The report also raises the question of whether some team owners should be disciplined or forced to sell their teams, as it recommended the league “determine whether disciplinary action is appropriate for any of these owners or team executives.”Even with so much of the worst abuse publicly known, the Yates report is stunning in how meticulously it details how many powerful soccer officials were told about abuse and how little they did to investigate or stop it. Among those whose inaction is detailed are a former U.S. Soccer president; the organization’s former chief executive and women’s national team coach; and the leadership of the Portland Thorns, one of the league’s most popular and best-supported teams.“Teams, the league and the federation not only repeatedly failed to respond appropriately when confronted with player reports and evidence of abuse, they also failed to institute basic measures to prevent and address it,” Yates wrote. She added that “abusive coaches moved from team to team, laundered by press releases thanking them for their service,” while those with knowledge of their misconduct stayed silent.In a statement, the women’s league said in the report, and an investigation it is undertaking with the players’ union, “will be critical to informing and implementing systemic reform and ensuring that the N.W.S.L. is a league where players are supported, on and off the pitch.” The players’ union said in a statement that players who had spoken to investigators “have shown profound courage and bravery, and we stand with them.”The national team players association released a statement saying it was “dismayed” that some clubs and U.S. Soccer staff “impeded the investigation,” and urged U.S. Soccer to implement the report’s recommendations. National team players largely did not respond publicly to the report, as they were on a plane to London for a match against England as the report was released.The report said the sport does little to train athletes and coaches about harassment, retaliation and fraternization. It noted that “overwhelming” numbers of players, coaches and U.S. Soccer staff members remarked that “women players are conditioned to accept and respond to abusive coaching behaviors as youth players.”From left, Rory Dames, Christy Holly and Paul Riley.Getty ImagesWhile the report details complaints made about several coaches, it focuses its narrative on three: Paul Riley, Rory Dames and Christy Holly. The accusations against Riley, who last coached the North Carolina Courage, and Dames, who coached the Chicago Red Stars, have been well documented in news media reports. The accusations against Holly, who was abruptly dismissed as coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year with little explanation, have not been aired publicly before.Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Holly declined to comment.Holly sexually coerced a player, according to the report, by inviting her to his home for what he said was a session to watch game film. Instead, he showed the player pornography and masturbated in front of her. Another time, according to the report, after calling in the player again under the pretense of watching game film, Holly groped the player’s genitals and breasts each time the film showed she made a mistake.While coaching in the women’s league years earlier, the report also found, Holly drew complaints of verbal abuse and mistreatment and had a relationship with a player “that caused a toxic team environment.” Yet little vetting of his past occurred as he moved from job to job.The report found that Riley “leveraged his position” as a coach to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships while working previously in a different women’s soccer league, and it said that investigators received “credible reports of sexual misconduct with other players” that were not detailed in the final report.Dames, a longtime youth soccer coach, fostered a “sexualized team environment” that included speaking to youth players about their sex lives, according to the report. That environment “crossed the line to sexual relationships” in multiple cases, which the report says “may have begun after the age of consent.” Dames also screamed at and belittled players, and joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Portland Thorns fans lit a smoke bomb last November as part of a protest of the sexual misconduct scandal in the league.Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesIn the cases of all three coaches, the report found, the women’s league and U.S. Soccer officials, as well as individual team owners and executives, were repeatedly made aware of complaints of inappropriate behavior but largely did nothing to address them or prevent them from occurring elsewhere.Sexual misconduct allegations were brought against Riley each year from 2015 to 2021, for example, and an anonymous player survey in 2014 also identified Riley, then coaching the Portland Thorns, as verbally abusive and sexist. The survey results were seen by U.S. Soccer and league officials, and feedback was distributed to the Thorns owner Merritt Paulson.In 2015, after the Thorns conducted an investigation, Riley was terminated. But the team said publicly that it had chosen not to extend his contract, and Riley was not disciplined. When he was hired by another team months later, no one from the league or the federation — which at the time effectively ran and bankrolled the league — provided his new team with any of the complaints or information used to substantiate his termination by the Thorns.Players also complained about Dames for years, beginning in 2014, when they told Sunil Gulati, then the U.S. Soccer president, and Jill Ellis, then the women’s national team head coach, that Dames had created a hostile work environment with the Chicago Red Stars, according to the report. Dames was also called abusive by his players in anonymous surveys, and in 2018 he was investigated after another prominent player complained. Yet while a U.S. Soccer investigation into that case substantiated many of the complaints, the report was not distributed throughout the organization or to the league or the Red Stars, and Dames was not disciplined.Jeff Plush at a news conference in 2017.Craig Barritt/Getty Images for LifetimeIn addition to detailing the behavior of several prominent coaches and the inaction of others, the report also took note of individuals and organizations who were not forthcoming or who actively tried to stymie the investigation — even as some publicly said they were cooperating.Jeff Plush, who was the commissioner of the women’s league from 2015 and 2017 and is now the head of U.S.A. Curling, did not respond to the investigators, the report said. Dan Flynn, the retired U.S. Soccer chief executive, responded only to written questions and would not sit for an interview.The Thorns, meanwhile, “interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments” to impede the investigation, according to the report. Racing Louisville F.C. declined to provide documents about Holly’s tenure, and told investigators that current and former employees could not speak about him because of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements the team had signed with Holly when he was fired.The Chicago Red Stars also delayed production of documents for months.Rectifying the problems identified in the report will be difficult. Soccer in the United States is run by a number of organizations — federations, professional leagues, youth clubs and state soccer organizations — that have overlapping authority, a tangled web that the report suggested may have played a role in reports of abusive behavior going unheeded.And the revelations may not be over. A separate joint investigation by the women’s league and its players association has not been completed, and the report also did not investigate youth soccer, even as it made clear that the investigators believe abuse is prevalent there as well.“The roots of abuse in women’s soccer run deep and will not be eliminated through reform in the N.W.S.L. alone,” investigators wrote. More

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      Welcome to Soccer’s Strangest Season

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      The World Cup will split seasons in two in much of the world, including the Premier League campaign that opens this weekend. What is revealed could be fascinating.Gian Piero Ventrone surveyed his handiwork with just the hint of a smile. A few minutes earlier, Ventrone, Tottenham Hotspur’s fitness coach, had gathered the club’s players together on the turf at the Seoul World Cup stadium and informed them of their next assignment.They had, by that stage, already been training for more than an hour, in searing heat and cloying humidity. Now they had one final exercise: Ventrone instructed the players to run the length of the field. Not once, or twice, but 42 times. The winner, he said, would be the last man standing.Now, as he looked around him, he saw those same players strewn across the field. Son Heung-min had collapsed, his muscles screaming and his lungs burning. Richarlison had sunk to his knees, gasping for air. Harry Kane had vomited. Ventrone was satisfied. Preseason, as far as the club’s fitness coach could see, was going swimmingly.Son Heung-min is feeling the effects of Conte’s gruelling pre-season drills 😳pic.twitter.com/g5mvtjlPV1— The Spurs Web (@thespursweb) July 11, 2022
      There was something strange, though, about the footage of that session — held in front of 6,000 fans during Spurs’ tour of South Korea — when it emerged last month. The methods deployed by Ventrone felt just a touch anachronistic, a relic of a bygone era, when players let themselves go over the summer, before they invented tactical periodization, before everyone was strapped to a GPS vest at all times.They felt particularly outdated this summer of all summers, though, given what lies ahead not only for Son, Kane and the rest of Tottenham’s team, but for several hundred of the world’s best players in England’s Premier League and elsewhere. The season on which they are embarking — the Premier League and the Bundesliga kick off this weekend — may well be the busiest, longest and most draining they will ever experience. As a result, it might also be the strangest.Arsenal, rebuilt around striker Gabriel Jesus, kicks off the Premier League season at Crystal Palace on Friday. It could send players from a half dozen countries to the World Cup in November.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersIt is not quite right, of course, to say that this is the first time in soccer’s history that there has been a winter World Cup. Chile in 1962, Argentina in 1978 and South Africa in 2010 were all winter World Cups. Nor is it strictly accurate to declare this the first time there has been a World Cup in the middle of the club season; after all, not every domestic competition runs from August to May.What makes Qatar 2022 unique, instead, is the fact that it will be the first World Cup to take place in the middle of the season for the overwhelming majority of its participants.Eight days before the tournament starts, most of the players summoned by their nations will still be locked in club combat in Europe. Exactly a week after it finishes, those employed by teams in the Premier League, at least, will be expected to take up the cudgels once more.In between, some of them will have taken part in seven of the most important games of their careers, all of that stress and emotion and exertion condensed into only a few weeks and played out in a series of purpose-built stadiums surrounded by towns and neighborhoods that exist for no reason other than the staging of a single event. This World Cup is not just a hiatus, a brief intermission to the season; it is a lacuna, a disconnect, a deus ex machina.Quite what its impact will be is difficult to predict. As usual, the return of the Premier League brings with it a suite of known unknowns that will define the season: Will Erik ten Hag turn Manchester United around? Why has Pep Guardiola decided that Manchester City does not need a full complement of substitutes? Can Arsenal be trusted?Manager Erik ten Hag is navigating a tricky situation with Cristiano Ronaldo, who wants out of Manchester United.Ed Sykes/Action Images Via ReutersNone of those questions, though, is nearly as pressing as attempting to discern the effect of the World Cup. It is hardly revelatory to suggest that there will, in effect, be two halves to this season: the first, a jostling for position, running from this weekend until the first week of November, and then a second, a sprint for the line, commencing late in December and concluding with the Champions League final on June 10.Those two periods, though, may not bear any real relation to one another. It is easy to imagine that, in the weeks immediately before the tournament, players anticipating a place in Qatar might suddenly become conspicuously — if not entirely consciously — risk-averse, and that afterward, the usual order of things will be upturned by players exhausted from the World Cup being thrust immediately back into action against colleagues who have had a month to rest and to relax.That might, in an optimistic reading, be a good thing. Perhaps the creeping predictability of even the Premier League — the league where anything can happen, as long as it involves Manchester City winning the title — will be put on hold, even just for a year, as the randomness invoked by a midseason World Cup upturns the established order.Julián Álvarez and Erling Haaland give Manchester City an entirely new look up front.Tony Obrien/ReutersOr perhaps not. Perhaps the gap between the elite and the also-rans is now so great that it takes more than a few weary limbs to level the playing field. Perhaps the squads of the self-appointed aristocrats are so strong that they will emerge not only unscathed, but with their dominance somehow enhanced.All that can be certain is that there will be an impact. What was so noteworthy about Ventrone’s brutal training session in Seoul was not that it was taking place on the eve of a season in which managers might have been expected to safeguard their players’ fitness, rather than risk burning them out long before the end, but that it was in South Korea at all.Tottenham, like the rest of the Premier League’s big beasts, had seen preseason as a chance to take the show on the road, to play a couple of money-spinning exhibition games around the globe. The players were not gently introduced to the longest, strangest season of their careers. They were, instead, flown across the world and then run into the ground. That is just the start of it. More than ever, this season, the winner will be the last one standing.The Real Test AwaitsThe United States beat England in the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup. The teams will collide again in a friendly in October in London.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesA few minutes before the final whistle, Vlatko Andonovski rose from his seat, smoothed the figure-hugging salmon-pink sweater he had chosen for the occasion, summoned his colleagues and made for the exit. He had, apparently, seen enough of both France and the Netherlands. He did not need to know who won. (France, futilely.)Andonovski, the United States women’s coach, seemed quite relaxed that night in Rotherham, just as he has throughout his stay in England for the final stages of Euro 2022. He was not making notes. He chatted happily with the phalanx of other managers and executives and scouts gathered in the tournament’s various directors’ boxes. He seemed unperturbed, unruffled.Do not, though, be fooled. Andonovski will have departed Europe in no doubt that next summer will not be quite so insouciant as this one. In a host of ways, Euro 2022 represented a seismic shift for women’s soccer in England and in Europe: the size of the crowds, the interest of the television audiences, the immediately discernible boost in momentum and, most pressing for Andonovski, in terms of the caliber of its play.Over the course of his stay, he will have noted that the threats to the United States’ hegemony are many and varied: a French side sufficiently gifted to beat the Dutch, the defeated World Cup finalists of three years ago, despite the absence of three of its brightest stars; a Germany reborn thanks to the blazing promise of Lina Magull and Lena Oberdorf.And, of course, most notably, an England team blessed with a depth of resources and richness of talent that perhaps makes it the equal of the United States, a team imbued with a conviction and a purpose by its coach, Sarina Wiegman, and now pulsing with the confidence and self-belief that only triumph can bring.The United States remains the standard-bearer in the women’s game, of course. There is a reason that tickets for its visit to Wembley in October sold out in only hours, and it is not just to do with coursing English pride. Alex Morgan, Rose Lavelle, Sophia Smith and the rest are a blockbuster draw. But Andonovski will have left the Euros in no doubt that his team’s dominance is in more peril now than it has been for a decade, as Europe surges into view. His job is to quell that rebellion. His days of relaxation will not last for long.Wants Are Not the Same as NeedsJoan Laporta: man of the people (but especially the people who demand new signings).Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesOf all the many eye-catching lines in my colleague Tariq Panja’s interview with Joan Laporta, the man hoping he will find the exit to the hole currently occupied by Barcelona if only he keeps digging, one in particular stood out. The club’s 400 million fans, he said, “require a level of success” that renders the idea of a patient, painstaking rebuild impossible.There is no question that Laporta’s approach to Barcelona’s crisis — spending vast sums on new signings in the hope of winning trophies immediately and kick-starting a “virtuous cycle” of triumph and investment — is risky. Still, though, it is just about possible to discern some sort of logic behind it.What is curious is the notion that this is what his club’s fans not only desire, but demand. Laporta almost seemed to be suggesting that, if Barcelona does not maintain a steady supply of flashbulb moments and fond memories, then those 400 million souls would simply drift away.To many, that is not how fandom works. Fan, after all, is not a synonym for consumer. A fan does not drift away when thick turns to thin. A fan can bear a couple of fallow years (especially at a time when Barcelona could very easily point to Pedri and Gavi and Ansu Fati and convince those same fans that a golden dawn lay at the end of a brief period of night). A fan should, in theory, be more concerned by the club’s long-term health than its short-term glory.And yet, for Barcelona as much as any elite team, that does not appear to be how all fans work. Laporta’s approach is defended to the hilt by an army of supporters on social media. His lionization is such that one member compared him, in what may be a first, to both the Pope and Kim Jong-un.Perhaps Laporta is right. Perhaps there is a section of Barcelona’s public that demands immediate satisfaction, that cannot countenance the idea of a few years of finishing as low as, say, third. Those are the people that Laporta believes he has to appease. Perhaps he is right. They are, it seems, real. They do exist. Whether they should be described as fans or not is a different matter.CorrespondenceMark Cuban would be delighted to know that he has prompted such contemplation among the readership of The New York Times’s pre-eminent soccer newsletter. He’d be even happier to know that so many of you agreed that he was right to worry that fans who come to sports through TikTok may not have the attention span to watch a whole game.“Kids may have grown out of ‘Tom and Jerry,’ but cartoons and the networks they ran on didn’t have an algorithm in their pocket, one they’ll carry for the rest of their lives, to keep that impulsive short-fix delivery method in their hands and vision,” wrote Eric Blind.Joel Gardner wrote along similar lines. “Cuban got rich in the sports business from his college days, so we ignore him at our peril. Kids have always had attention issues. Never before, though, have there been so many stimuli. The evening news is no longer Walter Cronkite. Ditto ‘SportsCenter,’ with its plays of the day. Cram that down through social media to TikTok, and it bodes ill not just for sports but for all human discourse.”Tim Ireland/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Brian Yaney, meanwhile, Cuban sounded like “another parent engaged in a desperate daily struggle to extract his child from the mind-numbing oblivion offered by transient social networks and to engage them in positive developmental activities.” Brian worried that by demurring, I was not “paying enough attention to the real world,” outside of sports consumption.I did not want to dismiss Cuban’s concerns glibly, certainly. I’m a parent, too, and though my children are too young to have encountered social media, we have already seen the effects of on-demand streaming on one of them. (Just cartoons and some portent of doom called ‘Blippi,’ but only because we couldn’t get him to pay attention to ‘Succession.’)And, as Neil Postman so brilliantly illustrated, I have no doubt that the condensation of information, and the conflation of news and entertainment, has wreaked untold damage on public discourse.In the context of sports, though, I have more hope. It doesn’t strike me as especially unusual that kids wouldn’t watch entire games; it seems logical that appreciation for a sport develops as we grow older and more comprehending of its nuances. And even if that is not the case, it strikes me as a shame that nobody in sports ever thinks that maybe it would be easier to address things like a lack of competitive balance than work out a way to boil down an entire game into a 12-second video clip. More

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      Hope Solo, Former U.S. Soccer Star, Pleads Guilty to Driving Impaired

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      Ms. Solo had a blood-alcohol level of three times the legal limit while in a car with her two children, the authorities said.Hope Solo, a former star goalie with the U.S. women’s soccer team, pleaded guilty on Monday to driving while impaired, four months after she was found passed out behind the wheel in the parking lot of a Walmart in Winston-Salem, N.C., with her two children in the back seat, the authorities said.Her sentence of two years in prison was suspended for all but 30 days, the Forsyth County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. The conditions of her sentencing allowed her to be relieved of that prison time through 30 days she spent at an in-person rehab facility, prosecutors said.During two years of probation, she will have to see a court-approved addiction expert and abide by any further court-mandated treatment, according to the District Attorney’s Office. She also had to surrender her driver’s license and will not be able to operate a car until she gets her license back, the release said.As part of her plea agreement, two other charges — misdemeanor child abuse and resisting a public officer — were dropped, Jim O’Neill, the Forsyth County district attorney, said in an interview.“I underestimated what a destructive part of my life alcohol had become,” Ms. Solo wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Monday. “I made a huge mistake. Easily the worst mistake of my life.”Her legal team did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Monday night.On March 31, Ms. Solo was found by a police officer asleep at the wheel with two children asleep in the back while her car’s engine ran, according to the district attorney’s office. A police officer noticed a strong odor of alcohol and asked her to perform sobriety tests, but Ms. Solo refused, prosecutors said.She was arrested, but refused to submit to a breathalyzer test, the District Attorney’s Office. A police officer obtained a search warrant for a blood sample and found that Ms. Solo had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, according to the news release. That is three times North Carolina’s legal limit of .08. Additionally, the test showed she had THC in her system, prosecutors said.Ms. Solo is considered one of the top goalkeepers in recent soccer history. Her two Olympic gold medals came in 2008 in Beijing and in 2012 in London. She won the World Cup in 2015 in Canada. In that World Cup and the one before it, she won the award for best goalie.Yet she also became known for intemperate behavior that sometimes led to altercations.In August 2016, after the Swedish team beat the U.S. team in the quarterfinals of the Rio Olympics, Ms. Solo criticized the Swedes’ defensive playing tactics and called them “a bunch of cowards.” U.S. Soccer responded by terminating her contract, citing “conduct that is counter to the organization’s principles.”She was also suspended for 30 days in 2015 after U.S. Soccer learned through news reports that Ms. Solo had argued with the police when her husband, the former N.F.L. tight end Jerramy Stevens, was arrested on charges of drunken driving. More

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      USWNT Qualifies for 2023 Women’s World Cup

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      A lopsided victory over Jamaica in a regional championship ensured that the Americans would get to defend their World Cup title next summer.A United States women’s national team that arrived in Mexico this week with two objectives has already achieved the first: After a lopsided victory over Jamaica on Thursday night, the United States clinched a place in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.The 5-0 victory came in the Americans’ second game at the Concacaf women’s championship, which is serving as both a regional championship and also as the qualifying tournament for the Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The United States beat Haiti, 3-0, in its opening game on Monday.Step One: ☑️WE’VE QUALIFIED FOR THE 2023 @FIFAWWC!!!! pic.twitter.com/jUSgovQcrx— USWNT – Concacaf Champs 🏆 (@USWNT) July 8, 2022
      Under the format of the revamped eight-team regional tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, the top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The United States ensured it would be one of the top finishers with a dominant performance against Jamaica: Sophia Smith scored twice in the first eight minutes, and Rose Lavelle, Kristie Mewis and Trinity Rodman added goals in the second half as the outclassed Jamaicans faded under an onslaught of U.S. depth and scoring chances.The Americans’ place in the World Cup was only ensured a few hours later, though, when Haiti beat host Mexico in the night’s second game. That result guaranteed the United States a top-two finish in its first-round group, and a place in the expanded 32-team World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next summer.The United States became the 12th nation to qualify, joining the co-hosts, along with South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and Vietnam from Asia; and Sweden, France, Denmark and Spain from Europe.Canada, the defending Olympic women’s champion and the Americans’ biggest regional rival, joined that group on Friday, when it defeated Panama, 1-0, in its second match in the tournament. Costa Rica did the same with its second victory, by 4-0 over Trinidad and Tobago.But the biggest story of the tournament could be Haiti: Its 3-0 victory over Mexico means it needs only a draw against Jamaica in its final group game to earn its first trip to the World Cup.The next goal for the United States, meanwhile, will be securing a place in the Paris Olympics. Only the winner of the Concacaf tournament will earn a direct place in that tournament, though there will be a lifeline for the runner-up and third-place nations through a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023.U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski is managing a team in transition as he navigates the path to both tournaments. The squad he brought to Mexico is a blend of World Cup veterans like Lavelle, Lindsey Horan and Becky Sauerbrunn and new faces like Smith, whose two goals gave her seven this year, the most for a U.S. player; defender Naomi Girma, who assisted on Smith’s first goal in only her third game for the U.S.; and Rodman, the daughter of the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman.That diversity of options has made the team a glimpse of the future of a championship squad that, for the moment, still includes veterans like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan. For Andonovski, the hardest decisions about who goes to the World Cup next year will come later. At the moment, he has every reason to like what he sees in the pipeline: Thirteen members of his squad are competing in their first World Cup or Olympic qualifying tournament for the team, and eight entered the tournament with fewer than 10 international appearances.Smith showed a hint of the promise at her team’s disposal in the opening minutes. On her first goal, she took a long pass on the right, lifted the ball over a defender’s head on the run to cut back and then flicked it with her right foot past the Jamaican goalkeeper.Her second came a few minutes later, and after a similar leading ball down the right, and was finished just as deftly: with a first-touch flip over the goalkeeper that was confirmed after a brief video review.“To be a start on the best team in the world — it’s not easy, it comes with a lot of weight,” Andonovski said of the 21-year-old Smith, adding, “She does have the potential to be one of the best players in the world.”Two more goals in the first half — by Ashley Hatch in the 11th minute and Mallory Pugh in the 27th — were erased by video review, which is being used in the women’s championship for the first time this year.The result, though, was never in doubt. An unmarked Lavelle scored at the back post in the 59th minute to make it 3-0; Kristie Mewis converted a penalty after Midge Purce was bowled over in the area in the 82nd minute; and Rodman turned in a cross from Pugh four minutes later for her second international goal. More

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      U.S. Women Beat Haiti to Open Concacaf W Championship

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      The Americans can qualify for the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympics by winning a regional championship. Their first step was a win over Haiti.The Women’s World Cup is a year away and the Paris Olympics don’t start for more than two, but both tournaments are the primary focus of the United States women’s national team over the next two weeks.The first goal? Qualify for them. The Americans took their first step on that front Monday night by opening play in the new Concacaf women’s championship with a 3-0 victory over Haiti in Monterrey, Mexico.Alex Morgan scored twice in the first half and Midge Purce added a late clincher in a wild game that involved disallowed goals, a missed penalty and an overturned red card.The revamped eight-team tournament, officially branded the Concacaf W Championship, is serving a dual role — as the qualifying tournament for next summer’s Women’s World Cup and for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Under its new format — a group stage followed by a knockout round — the first task should be a simple one for the Americans: The top two finishers in each four-team group qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup, where the United States is the two-time defending champion.The latter job may be a little more tricky. Only the champion in Mexico will claim an automatic place in the 2024 Summer Games, while the runner-up and third-place nations will have to contest a Concacaf Olympic playoff in September 2023. That would be a bit more jeopardy than Coach Vlatko Andonovski and his world-beating and well-paid players might want at this current moment in their evolution.Coach Vlatko Andonovski is trying to balance past success with his team’s future.Daniel Becerril/ReutersAndonovski has made no secret that he is managing a team in transition, and that has made these games — every game, really — an important chance for players to impress the coaching staff, and ensure they are in his plans for the next year or more. It is another opportunity for rising players to force their way into the mix, and for veteran players to defend their positions. Not all have succeeded.The future of the U.S. team, regardless of what happens in Mexico, remains a bit of an incomplete picture. Morgan, who scored twice on Monday, and Megan Rapinoe both received their first call-ups to the team since October for the Concacaf event. But Morgan, 33, is already defending her position from rising stars like Catarino Macario, who is currently out with a knee injury. And young forwards like Mallory Pugh, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman all play the same position as Rapinoe, who turned 37 on Tuesday.“It’s not easy being a forward in the United States right now,” Andonovski said when he announced his roster for the Concacaf championship. “Obviously, it’s great, but it’s not easy because the competition is getting bigger and bigger.”Similar battles are playing out across the field in every position, in every roster decision, as the United States transitions from a roster that led it to two straight World Cup titles to one that might carry it to a third against regional rivals like Canada, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, and European contenders like Sweden, Germany, Spain, the Netherland and England — among others — who are contending the European championship this month.The Americans’ remaining group-stage schedule includes games against Jamaica (on Thursday) and host Mexico (on Monday). Canada leads Group B, which features Trinidad & Tobago, Costa Rica and Panama. The final is July 18.To get there, Andonovski will rely on a blend of the experience, the talent and the generations at his disposal: Of the 23 players on the U.S. roster, seven are in their 30s but eight are 25 or younger. And for now, he has been making no promises to anyone.“It doesn’t mean that all these players that have done well in the past are just going to come back here in the next camp because they’ve done well a year ago or two years ago,” Andonovski said in February, when an earlier roster also omitted several accomplished veterans.“There’s a reason why we’re not calling Mia Hamm or Julie Foudy in camp, right? So the same goes here: They need to perform.” More

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      U.S. Soccer and Players Guarantee Equal Pay in New Contracts

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      Landmark labor agreements with members of the men’s and women’s national teams will include higher paychecks and shared World Cup prize money.As the women’s soccer stars stared at their laptop screens Monday night and the new labor deal was explained to them, the numbers just kept climbing. A few thousand dollars here. Tens of thousands of dollars there. Pretty soon, the figures had crossed into the millions.What they added up to, the players all knew, was something many of them had chased for most of their careers: equal pay.That reality arrived Wednesday in landmark contracts with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will guarantee, for the first time, that soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions.In addition to equal rates of pay for individual matches, the deals include a provision, believed to be the first of its kind, through which the teams will pool the unequal prize money payments U.S. Soccer receives from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, for their participation in the quadrennial World Cup. Starting with the 2022 men’s tournament and the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that money will be shared equally among the members of both teams.“No other country has ever done this,” U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Cone, said of the deal to equalize World Cup payments. “I think everyone should be really proud of what we’ve accomplished here. It really, truly, is historic.”U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, a former national team player who helped guide the national teams to a deal, with President Biden at an Equal Pay Day event in March.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe agreements were reached just over six years after a group of stars from the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national team began a campaign to overcome what they said was years of wage discrimination by U.S. Soccer against its female players. The players argued that they had been paid less than their male counterparts for decades even as they won world championships and Olympic gold medals.The fight over per diems and paychecks eventually morphed into a federal lawsuit in which the women accused U.S. Soccer of “institutionalized gender discrimination.” While the women lost in federal court in 2020, when a judge ruled against their core claims, they eventually won their equal pay victory at the negotiating table, with a final assist from the men’s team.It was the men’s team’s players, in fact, who opened a pathway to a deal late last year when they privately agreed to share some of the millions of dollars in World Cup bonus money that they have traditionally received by pooling it with the smaller payments the women receive from their own championship.That split could see the two teams pool, and share, $20 million or more as soon as next year. That will be in addition to match payments that are expected to average $450,000 a year — and double that, or more, in years when World Cup bonus money is added.For the women’s team’s players, Wednesday’s agreements were as much a relief as a triumph. Becky Sauerbrunn, one of the five players who signed the original complaint in 2016, admitted, “It’s hard to get so, so excited about something we should have had all along.”Through the years, as the sides battled in courtrooms and negotiating sessions, the dispute produced sometimes caustic — and personal — disagreements about personal privacy, workplace equality and basic fairness, and drew support (and second-guessing) from a disparate chorus of presidential candidates, star athletes and Hollywood celebrities — not all of them supportive of the women’s campaign for pay equity.The difference in compensation for men and women has been one of the most contentious issues in soccer in recent years, particularly after the American women won consecutive World Cup championships, in 2015 and 2019, and the men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Over the years, the women’s team, which includes some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, had escalated and amplified its fight in court filings, news media interviews and on the sport’s grandest stages.The dispute had always been a complex issue, with differing contracts, unequal prize money and other financial quirks muddying the distinctions in pay between the men’s and women’s teams and complicating the ability of national governing bodies like U.S. Soccer to resolve the differences.Yet the federation ultimately committed to a fairer system. To achieve it, U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements. These agreements will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year from sponsors, broadcasters and other partners.The U.S. women’s soccer team amplified its equal pay message on the way to winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesLabor peace will be expensive: U.S. Soccer has committed to single-game payments for most matches of $18,000 per player for games won, and as much as $24,000 per game for wins at certain major tournaments — cementing the status of the U.S. men and women as two of the highest-paid national teams in the world. And the federation will surrender to the men and women on those teams 90 percent of the money it receives from FIFA for sending teams to the next two World Cups.The split of prize money, then, is a notable concession by the American men, who have previously been awarded the bulk of those multimillion-dollar payments by U.S. Soccer, and a potential seven-figure windfall for the women. The 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, for example, competed for a prize pool of $30 million; the 32 men’s teams that will compete in Qatar in November will split $450 million.Timeline: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Fight for Equal PayCard 1 of 11A six-year legal battle. More